It’s SSEM’s 20th anniversary, and it is back in Noosa! This is the conference for clinicians who love emergency medicine, and we’re going to wow you with a punchy, pacey and engaging programme:
- 3 keynotes: real-life stories of disaster and triumph
- 6 panel sessions: including critical care, paediatrics, geriatrics, and international emergency medicine.
- Daily tips and tricks, live on stage
- 21 presentations: short, sharp and relevant
- 5 workshops: trauma masterclass, difficult ventilation, challenging airways, AI enabled echo, and US guided nerve blocks
- 2 problem-based concurrents in patient safety and toxicology: exercises in imagination, with actors and simulators
- capped off with Dangerous Ideas: daring proposals for how we live and work.
All hosted at Peppers Resort, set on the edge of the National Park, and a short stroll from the world famous Hastings St. The reception is on the beach at Bistro C, we have daily morning activities, and the dinner is a sunset cruise away on the Noosa River.
The sand is golden, the water is warm, the backdrop is stunning. And this conference will bring us all together again. Check out the awesome line-up below.
Jo Deverill
Convenor
Participating Speakers
Andrew Tagg
SSEM22
Bubbles
Dr Andrew Tagg is an emergency physician with a special interest in paediatrics. Having escaped the NHS in 2004 to work as a cruise ship doctor, he took the very slow boat to a better life in Australia. As a registrar, he co-founded Don’t Forget The Bubbles, one of the worlds leading paediatric websites.
Hamish Kent
SSEM22
STOPPIT
Hamish is an emergency physician who currently works in Tamworth Rural Referral hospital. He spent most of his formative years in medicine on the Sunshine Coast and in the Newcastle area. Key interests include staff and patient education, lifestyle medicine, and enjoying work. Future plans involve further development of the above, wilderness medicine and further study in paediatrics.
Ena Maleckas
SSEM22
Ancient Practices
Dr Ena Maleckas is an emergency physician currently working within the glorious Sunny Coast HHS. Her top work passion is perfecting end-of-life care within the emergency department, and is a firm believer that the ED has a unique ability to recognise and ‘trajectorise’ patients in terminal crisis. As a result, Ena created the DandELinE (Decision making and End of Life in Emergency) pathway – now rolled out statewide. Ena is a self-confessed “geriophile”, clinical lead for Geriatric Emergency Department Intervention (GEDI) team; co-lead for RaSS (RACF acute Support Service) and sits on various statewide advisory panels.
Emma Lawrey
SSEM22
EM Out There
Emma grew up in Canada to NZ parents but studied medicine in Auckland. She is an emergency physician who has transitioned through a number of interests including postgrads in education and toxicology. For the last 8 years Emma has focused on humanitarian health and disaster response, having worked as the clinical director of the NZMAT, and for WHO assisting governments and medical teams with disaster preparedness. She currently works for Auckland Hospital, the Northern Coordination Centre, and as a consultant for RespondGlobal. Emma’s most recent deployments include Papua New Guinea for COVID (2021), Cook Islands vaccine rollout support (2021) and Samoa for measles response (2019). Her previous deployments were focused on sudden onset disaster in the Pacific.
Ellen Burkett
SSEM22
Ancient Practices
Ellen is an emergency physician at PAH ED, and clinical lead of RACF acute care support services at the Healthcare Improvement Unit. Ellen’s current interest is in better understanding our human condition, as shared by both clinicians and patients alike. What does it actually mean to be human? What does it mean to provide care for fellow humans? Is the care we provide of the same quality regardless of goals of care? Is one human life intrinsically of more value than the next? And what, if anything, can we learn from Schrödinger’s cat?
Doug Feinbloom
SSEM22
STOPPIT
Originally hailing from Washington DC, Doug shifted hemispheres to attend the University of Queensland Medical School after a career in pre-hospital emergency services. Upon graduation, Doug remained in Brisbane completing his emergency specialist training. Currently working as a staff specialist at Caboolture Emergency Department, Doug has an interest in combating the idiocy of inertial medical practice.
Donna Mills
SSEM22
EM Out There
Dr Donna Mills FACEM has a strong interest in emergency care development, postgraduate medical training and public health in the Pacific region. In 2019, she lived and worked in Honiara, Solomon Islands and assisted with development of emergency care systems and introduction of a Diploma of Emergency Medicine in the National Referral Hospital. She has also been involved in Suva, Fiji since 2015 in a similar capacity. Throughout the COVID pandemic, Dr Mills has provided remote and in-country support for Pacific nations with regards to COVID preparedness and response as well as the ongoing delivery of post-graduate education.
Deon Strydom
SSEM22
Tips & Tricks-The Turducken Splint
Deon’s current position is a Senior Staff Specialist and Front of House Clinical Lead at the Sunshine Coast University Hospital, as a Fellow of the Australian College of General Practitioners. His area of interest is musculoskeletal presentations, and he has a background that includes 5 years of trauma and conflict orthopaedics in South Africa as well as a Postgraduate Certificate in Sports Medicine completed at Dunedin University in New Zealand. His previous work life in rural remote New Zealand, isolated third world hospitals and rural remote Australia and Pacific Islands, meant that innovation was the name of the game.
David Ward
SSEM22
Dangerous Ideas
Clare Mitchell
SSEM22
Dangerous Ideas
Clare is an emergency physician and medical retrieval consultant in the Northern Territory. She lives dangerously, spent months riding her motorbike around the High Andes in South America, and when back in Oz enjoys skydiving. Her biggest and bravest challenge was taking on the ladies of the Country Womens’s Association in competitive crochet. Within the professional sphere Clare’s interests include medical education, clinical research and indigenous health.
Anne Creaton
SSEM22
Dangerous Ideas
Dr Anne Creaton is a Melbourne-based emergency physician. She has a passion for education and developing capacity in people and systems. In 2013 she moved to Fiji to develop training programs in emergency medicine and prehospital care. This led to a Masters in Public Health, weekends training with volunteer first responders and a deep appreciation for Pacific Island communities. While living in Fiji she experienced a Dengue fever outbreak and Cyclone Winston and she returned to Fiji as part of an AUSMAT team during the COVID19 Delta surge in July 2021.
Aisling Fleury
SSEM22
Ancient Practices
Dr Aisling Fleury is a Brisbane-based geriatrician working in Logan and The Prince Charles Hospitals. She has a special interest in perioperative care of older people, especially the emergency general surgical population. Outside of work she loves long open water swims, rock climbing and cooking.
Warren Adie
SSEM22
Facilitator: US Guided Nerve Block Workshop
Dr Warren Adie is an Emergency Physician and Retrieval Consultant working in the Medical at Alice Springs Hospital. Holding a certificate diploma in clinical ultrasound and with aims to complete a diagnostic diploma in ultrasound, his enthusiasm in point-of-care-ultrasound arose from working in resource poor regional and remote hospitals across Australia. His interest now lies in incorporating bedside ultrasound to improve the patient experience through improved service delivery and workflow within the ED. He loves good wine which is predominantly red, great music which is mostly from the last century and busting moves on the dance floor which is always compulsory.
Stephen Priestley
SSEM22
Avoiding Communication Disasters Workshop
Stephen is an experienced emergency physician who has been a Director of EM across two states and practices on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland. He has long been passionate about respectful communication and works with a major international medical indemnity organization delivering workshops to health care professionals around the world on the key nontechnical skills that contemporary health professionals need to pay attention to in order to improve the delivery of care and lessen error and harm.
Stephanie Schlueter
SSEM22
Facilitator: Challenging Airways Workshop
Dr Stephanie Schlueter, is a rural Emergency Physician in Albany, WA, and a clinician with the WA Country Health Emergency Telehealth Service. Born and raised in Germany, Steph moved to Australia in 2007 after graduating from Charité, University Hospital, Berlin. Now as a real Aussie Emergency Physician with a passion for rural and remote critical care education, she is a course instructor and director for many Emergency Medicine courses, the WA ACEM EMET Lead and has written two rurally focussed emergency medicine courses. When not in the hospital Steph enjoys “helping” on the farm and trail running with her dogs.
Shannon Baso
SSEM22
Toxicological Trials and Tribulations Workshop
Shannon is an emergency physician working in Bundaberg, QLD, where she enjoys the ocean, cane fields, and pragmatic rural communities. Previously she has worked in urban, tertiary and regional centres along the Queensland coast. She is committed to providing high quality, holistic, emergency care to all people disadvantaged by distance from tertiary centres. Shannon has a passion for toxicology and toxinology, being perfectly placed in emergency medicine to expertly manage cases, develop the field and enjoy the challenges it brings.
Rob McDonald
SSEM22
Difficult Ventilation (Made Easy)
Rob is an emergency nurse practitioner who loves almost all aspects of the emergency department including its unpredictable nature. He has a background as an educator with a passion for demystifying ventilation. Rob discovered this in the back of a helicopter. He went on to education positions where he developed strategies to make emergency ventilation less fearful. Rob now works in a fast track model hoping for the day when his teammates call on him for help. He lives near the beach with his wife and two beautiful daughters, who breath more life into him than any ventilator ever could.
Robyn Brady
SSEM22
Bubbles
Robyn is part of the first wave of PEM physicians in Australia and in a long career has focussed on the innovations that she feels have the most impact on emergency practice- scenario based training, diagnostic reasoning, and point of care ultrasound. Living in Ballina, COVID border closures meant a return to general emergency and the opportunity to progress POCUS through DDU training and SSP development in Lismore. She has practiced or taught ultrasound in multiple diverse settings from the tertiary hospital to remote Australia, East Timor, and a temporary field hospital during the Northern Rivers floods. In 2021 she was named ASUM Educator of the year.
Peter Garrett
SSEM22
Difficult Ventilation (Made Easy)
Peter Garrett MBBS BSc(Hons) FACEM FCEM FCICM became an Intensive Care Specialist after enjoying his time as an Emergency Medicine Specialist and Retrieval Physician, because he became fascinated by the machines that went ping. He is the Research Lead at Sunshine Coast University Hospital Adult ICU and still does paediatric ICU and retrieval medicine with Lifeflight. His research, audit and teaching interests have always been around the challenges arising from severe extremes in pathology, whether it’s the difficult to ventilate or difficult to diagnose. He won’t always know the answer, but is happy to help you chase it down.
Matthew MacPartlin
SSEM22
Challenging Airways
Matthew is a dual qualified intensivist and emergency physician. From Dublin, he now lives in Sydney and works in Wollongong and with Careflight at the Rapid Retrieval Base in Westmead. Matthew has an interest in sports and exercise medicine and for over twenty years has put these skills to use as a motorsport medic, with Formula 1, the World Rally Championship, Australian Supercars and the Asia-Pacific Rally Championship. He was part of the first wave of FOAM and remains involved in medical education in a range of formats. Matthew is also a mountain biker, drummer and 3D printing tinker.
Luke Wheatley
SSEM22
Challenging Airways
Luke Wheatley is an emergency and prehospital physician whose career has seen him managing difficult airways in the wild in much of Australia and the UK. He actively avoids social media as much as possible only recently re-installing Facebook to feed his addiction to buying bikes and bike parts on marketplace. When not at work he is shredding the green trails on the local mountain or paying his bike mechanic to fix his DIY work.
Kylie Baker
SSEM22
Facilitator: Echo Workshop
Kylie Baker MBBS, FACEM, CCPU, @kyliebaker888 is an Emergency Physician at Ipswich General Hospital, who has learnt, researched and taught bedside ultrasound since 2001. She was trained at the Australian Institute of Ultrasound, has tutored at AIU and is now taking a break to study for a DDU in emergency medicine. Her current interests lie in teaching point of care ultrasound as a decision-enhancing tool for acutely unwell patients. She is a strong believer in problem directed, whole body assessment, and is currently exploring the inclusion of bowel ultrasound and venous congestion indices into assessment.
Kathryn Woolfield
SSEM22
Toxicological Trials & Tribulations Workshop
Kathryn Woolfield is an emergency physician on the Sunshine Coast. She has an interest in reducing health inequalities and improving resource stewardship and holds a Masters in Public Health and Tropical Medicine. Other medical Interests are broad (like so many emergency physicians) and include toxicology, ECGs, career transitions and sustainable healthcare. Outside of work, she enjoys the trials and tribulations of organic gardening in the subtropics, and sewing her own clothes as part of the #slowfashion movement.
Jo Deverill
SSEM22
Chair, Organising Committee
Jo is an emergency medicine specialist based on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland. He has experience and qualifications in aeromedical retrieval, simulation education and point of care ultrasound. He helped establish the first rural pocket simulation centre in Queensland, led the Sunshine Coast’s Simulation Training in Emergency Medicine (STEM) programme, and is currently clinical lead for ultrasound at the Sunshine Coast University Hospital ED. His special interest is in educational videography, and his hobbies include mountain biking, photography, and reforestation.
Fran Williamson
SSEM22
Facilitator:Trauma Masterclass Workshop
Fran Williamson is based at the RBWH and splits her time between the emergency department and as a consultant in the Trauma Service. She combines her love of trauma and education in her roles as the A/Chair of ACEM Trauma Network, the clinical lead for education with the Queensland State-wide Trauma Network focused on developing educational resources across the state, and terrorising candidates on trauma topics at fellowship teaching. Her research interests include pelvic binders, analgesia for chest injuries and the role of imaging in trauma care.
Digby Green
SSEM22
Toxicological Trials and Tribulations
Digby Green is an emergency physician working at The Cairns Hospital. He has a special interest in clinical toxicology and is a founding member of the Cairns Area Toxicology Service providing toxicological advice to tropical north Queensland for the past 10 years.
Casey Parker
SSEM22
Facilitator: US Guided Nerve Block Workshop
Dr Casey Parker (MBBS DCH FRACGP Grad Dip Anaesth. DDU) is a rural generalist who has worked in Broome and the northwest of Australia for the last 20 years.
He has qualifications in General Practice, Paediatrics, Anaesthesia and Diagnostic Ultrasound.Since 2011 he has been publishing the Broomedocs blog and podcast with the goal of translating excellent healthcare into rural and remote Australia. Dr Parker has a passion for the use of ultrasound and echocardiography within the Emergency Department.
Andy Buck
SSEM22
Facilitator: Trauma Masterclass Workshop
Andy is an Emergency Physician from Melbourne. He is the Director of the Emergency Trauma Management Course and sits on the ACEM Trauma Network Executive. He’s just returned from several years at the Royal Darwin Hospital (where he acted as the Trauma Liaison for ED, ED representative on the RDH Trauma Management Committee and ED medical lead for simulation), as well as working as a Medical Retrieval Consultant (MRC) for CareFlight NT. Andy is now spreading his time working between ETM, the Royal Melbourne Hospital (one of Victoria’s Major Trauma Centres), the Northern Hospital’s Virtual Triage Team and CareFlight.
Andrew Perry
SSEM22
Facilitator: Trauma Masterclass Workshop
Andrew Perry is an Emergency and Retrieval Physician from Adelaide, South Australia. He works half time as an ED Consultant for the Royal Adelaide and Queen Elizabeth Hospital Emergency Departments, and half time for MedSTAR, the Emergency Medical Retrieval Service of the South Australian Ambulance Service. He was the Training Lead for MedSTAR’s Emergency Medicine Education and Training program and is the Chair of the South Australian ACEM Specialist Education Committee. Andrew also facilitates for the Emergency Trauma Management course.
Andrew Hobbins-King
SSEM22
Challenging Airways
Dr Andrew Hobbins King is a passionate and energetic emergency physician working with the Sunshine Coast Hospital and Health Service. He enjoys the contrasting challenges of working with the close-knit regional emergency teams at Gympie and Nambour Hospital, whilst contributing to the development of tertiary critical care and trauma services at Sunshine Coast University Hospital. As Co-Professional Lead for the Clinical Excellence Queensland PROmoting Value-based care in EDs (PROV-ED) Project, he loves sharing innovative and unique ideas throughout Queensland Health to improve patient care and make working in ED a little bit better along the way.
Elissa Kennedy-Smith
SSEM22
Facilitator: Echo Workshop
Dr. Elissa Kennedy-Smith is an Emergency Physician who works at My Emergency Doctor, Sandringham Hospital Emergency Department and The Royal Women’s Hospital in their Early Pregnancy Assessment Service. Elissa has an avid interest in all Emergency applications of Point of Care Ultrasound, completing multiple CCPUs in 2012, and then going on to attain her Diploma of Diagnostic Ultrasound (Emergency) in 2017. She enjoys teaching all aspects of ED POCUS, is an Honorary Advisor for EMUGs, CLUS for Alfred Health, the current Chair of the ED Ultrasound Committee for ACEM and officially an “Ultrasound tragic”.
Vijay Manivel
Facilitator – ECHO Workshop
Dr Vijay Manivel is a senior emergency physician qualified in emergency ultrasound, based in Western/ Northwest Sydney, NSW. He is an active researcher in the field of emergency ultrasound, with a particular interest in ultrasonography during resuscitation and novel methods to improve the quality of emergency physician performed ultrasound. His passion lies in integrating emergency diagnostic and procedural ultrasound with clinical emergency medicine effectively. Other than work, he is interested in arts, badminton, cricket and cooking.
Ian Norton
KEYNOTE – SSEM22
Dr Ian Norton, founder and Managing Director of Respond Global, is a specialist emergency physician and passionate humanitarian with a wealth of experience in coordinating responses to outbreaks and disasters. Ian led the WHO’s Emergency Medical Team (EMT) Initiative from 2014-20. During this time, he coordinated responses to ebola, diphtheria and measles outbreaks as well as to earthquakes and cyclones, and in war zones.
Previously, Ian was the Director of Disaster Preparedness and Response at the National Critical Care & Trauma Response Centre in Darwin, establishing the AusMAT framework and designing field hospitals that are today used for international emergency health responses.
Melanie Wright (nee Schlanger)
KEYNOTE – SSEM22
Melanie Wright OAM (nee Schlanger) made her debut on the Australian swim team in 2006 to kickstart a career spanning 10 years. She competed in two Olympic Games winning five Olympic medals including two gold. She has also won gold at the Commonwealth Games and World Championships and has broken two world records.
Outside of the pool Melanie has completed a Bachelor of Biomedcial Science, Bachelor of Medical Studies, Doctor of Medicine (MD) and Master of Business Administration (MBA). She is also a qualified personal trainer, swim instructor, mum of two and self-described “repeated failure.”
Grant Fraser
KEYNOTE – SSEM22
Grant Fraser is what is left of a doctor working in the ED for 25 years. He is a FACRRM with GEM who originally trained and worked in the US, then spent 9 years in Australia before returning to Nashville, Tennessee in 2017. Grant has an interest in evidence-based medicine, emergency sonography, medical informatics, and trauma.
He was the sole physician on duty at the regional hospital in Bowling Green, Kentucky, on the day multiple tornadoes struck that region.